Legislators are there to directly reflect the opinions and interests of their constituents, judges are there to have expert knowledge of the law and how it applies to each case uniquely. The first needs some form of democratic mechanism to ensure that they represent people's current opinions, the later needs a meritocratic mechanism to ensure they are experts in the correct fields.
If judges were the only element of a court I would agree that it would be problematic to have no democratic input, but in common law systems at least that element is represented by juries who are the most powerful element of a court case as they are unchallengable arbiters of fact and drawn through sortition which is even more democratic than election.
Judges shouldnt be elected for the same reasons surgeons shouldnt be elected.
We've been launching nuclear reactors into space for decades (mostly RTGs) they're just much smaller. There isnt any chance of them exploding or anything when exposed to radiation, but yes the chance of the rocket failing, exploding and showering radioactive material over the ocean is why this has to be done incredibly carefully if it is done.
Any excuse you use to explain why you can use a slur is exactly that: an excuse.
I guess that is what I take issue with, that statement makes it sounds like any use of a slur is always wrong regardless of context and that any reason for using it is just to wiggle out of you being a bad person.
Youre right that irony doesnt stopbit being a slur, but usage absolutely matters. Unless you think its inexcusable black people using the n word with each other? Context is incredibly important.
No, less is perfectly acceptable. GoT is very annoying for turning people into grammar pedants for a 18th century style suggestion.
There’s no apparent way to disable the Microsoft 365 account manager in the Start menu, and there’s no option to deactivate the constant nagging to upgrade to a paid Microsoft 365 subscription.
Sounds like an ad to me.
But the vast majority of the time they are approved, and the nomination begins with politicians. Contrast this to the way the UK does it where the appointments come from the senior judges with politicians then approving or rejecting the proposed new member.
Thats a problem with political appointments by the president not life terms.
Its wild how some people's blind hate of gen AI has got them thinking "corporate control of culture is good actually"
Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user's public photos and posts
The European Court of Justice upheld a 2016 decision that said Apple received unlawful aid from Ireland.
Where is the LLM that can reproduce specific whole copyrighted works on demand? All ive seen is reproductions of quotes of a few sentences (fair use) and hacks that can make it ocasionally vomit up random larger fragments of its training data, maybe up to a few paragraphs.
Theres also the Russian option: level the entire urban area to rubble with artillary.
Yep, its definitely not possible that nice small businesses like universal and sony would sue without an actual case in order to try and crush competitors with costs.
Estimates for chatgpt usage per query are on the order of 20-50 Wh, which is about the same as playing a demanding game on a gaming pc for a few minutes. Local models are significantly less.
The purpose of twitter like platforms is to have people to listen to and people to listen to you, so yes vastly lower user counts is a drawback.
Have you considered that maybe other people have different priorities, needs and desires to you, and that for people coming around to your point of view you should encourage them rather than castigate them for taking too long?
hmmm I wonder if that is considered in the thousands of words of this article...
It got more unpleasant after the blue-tick fiasco: identity verification became something you could buy, which destroyed the trust quotient. So I joined the rival platform Mastodon, but fast realised that I would never get 70,000 followers on there like I had on Twitter. It wasn’t that I wanted the attention per se, just that my gang wasn’t varied or noisy enough. There’s something eerie and a bit depressing about a social media feed that doesn’t refresh often enough, like walking into a shopping mall where half the shops have closed down and the rest are all selling the same thing.
Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson?
> I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man like him – the obnoxious “long hours at a high intensity” bullying of his staff began immediately. But I’ve had some of the most interesting conversations of my life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: “Anyone got catastrophically lonely during Covid?”; “Anyone hooked up with their secondary school boy/girlfriend?” We used to call it the place where you told the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.
> “Twitter has broken the mould,” Mulhall says. “It’s ostensibly a mainstream platform which now has bespoke moderation policies. Elon Musk is himself inculcated with radical right politics. So it’s behaving much more like a bespoke platform, created by the far right. This marks it out significantly from any other platform. And it’s extremely toxic, an order of magnitude worse, not least because, while it still has terms of service, they’re not necessarily implementing them.”
> Global civil society, though, finds it incredibly difficult to reject the free speech argument out of hand, because the alternative is so dark: that a number of billionaires – not just Musk but also Thiel with Rumble, Parler’s original backer, Rebekah Mercer (daughter of Robert Mercer, funder of Breitbart), and, indirectly, billionaire sovereign actors such as Putin – are successfully changing society, destroying the trust we have in each other and in institutions. It’s much more comfortable to think they’re doing that by accident, because they just love “free speech”, than that they’re doing that on purpose. “Part of understanding the neo-reactionary and ‘dark enlightenment’ movements, is that these individuals don’t have any interest in the continuation of the status quo,”
You seem very insistent on interpreting millenia of history through the lense of an early 20th century political movement.
Yes there has likely always been an element of theatre and leaders exagerating their role in battles, but to claim that nobility/monarchs never came from warrior castes that were active in fighting flies in the face of huge amounts of scholarship. It hasnt been true in industrialised societies since the 18th century at least but that doesnt mean it never was.
Earlier this year, a Boeing aircraft's door plug fell out in flight – all because crucial bolts were missing. The incident shows why simple failures often signal larger problems.
Earlier this year, a Boeing aircraft's door plug fell out in flight – all because crucial bolts were missing. The incident shows why simple failures like this are often a sign of larger problems, says John Downer.
New Popular Front predicted to get 172-192 seats, with Marine Le Pen’s far-right RN and allies down in third
Only a whole-hearted endorsement of the New Popular Front coalition can stop the National Rally, says Cole Stangler, a journalist based in Marseille
The European Union was impotent in the face of crisis, while Britain remained agile.
A 12-year industry roadmap has been unveiled to address the rising amount of solar panel waste headed for the tip
‘Hasan’, 24, argued he would face persecution in Israel on grounds of his race, faith and its ‘apartheid regime’
In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.
In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.
Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.
For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.
Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”
Delta Air Lines jet was due to depart Atlanta international airport and none of the crew or passengers were hurt
Because Boeing were on such a good streak already...
Chunk of fuselage also broke away, forcing emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon
Silicon Valley’s court of public opinion found the ousted OpenAI chief innocent until proven innocent, exposing the cult of personality that surrounds the tech world’s star CEOs.
A new history of the Luddites, "Blood in the Machine," argues that 19th century fears about technology are still relevant today. It's the latest in a long line of attempts to reclaim the label.
Fears that China’s crackdown on dissidents is expanding into cultural sphere after linguistic group closes over a fictional essay about erosion of liberties
